Pre-edit - I found this in one of my notebooks and decided it should have a place on Hive, so here we go. I'll decide if I can do more with it later...
“Father, please,” he said in a voice a pitch higher than usual. “Please. I didn’t intend any harm.”
“You didn’t intend any harm? Do you mean you intended no harm?”
The boy looked at his feet, hands clasped before him at his midriff. His brow creased in deep concentration. He looked up.
“Father, I meant no harm,” he said, his voice calm and quiet. Tears brimmed at his lashes. Dirt streaked down his face from tears already shed.
“Very good. Your lessons are coming along.”
The boy gave a sigh of relief and he closed his eyes. In silent prayer, his fingers laced together tighter, the flesh turning pale as he squeezed. His limbs trembled and his lower lip shook.
The boy tried not to make a murmur when the birch switch swished through the air and swiped his upper legs just below the skinny curve of his buttocks. The thin fabric of his trousers gave scant protection from the thin, flexible wood.
Behind him, the sound of a collective intake of breath from the other children gave the priest reason to curve his lips in a humourless smile. No child saw the smile, he was too meticulous for that.
“This hurts me far more than it hurts you, child,” he said, piety ringing false in his words. The priest caught hold of his own garments, clasping them close to his body to keep the cloth from impeding his swing.
The boy clasped his hands tighter still, to prevent his natural instinct to reach around in an effort to protect his rear from the switch.
“Stand still, child,” the priest whispered. He drew back his arm, eyeing his target. Two more whacks before the boy would cry out, he estimated. A quiet sob from the collection of children standing behind drew a sharp glance from the priest and an older girl nudged her small neighbour to be quiet.
The priest placed a pudgy, ring-bedecked finger to his lips, turned to face the children and smiled. “Shh,” he said. “Or you shall be next.”
The priest turned his back to the audience and watched his target carefully. At the first sign of relaxed muscles, he struck again. No sound from the boy.
The next blow came fast, too fast for the boy to have time to prepare
Caught by surprise, he gave a shocked and cut-short yell of pain.
The priest’s gleeful smile and any plan for further punishment was cut short by a knock on the door.
“What is it?” he said, his soft, patient tone replaced by stern authority.
The door opened. “Father, Sir Farage is here,” a young maid said from the doorway, making a clumsy curtsey.
The priest bustled past her. “Practice that curtsey before anyone of note sees it.”
“Yes, Father, I’m sorry, Father,” she said. She followed the priest, closing the door behind her.
She paused, head down, one hand covering her face, and she listened to the soft wails from the other side of the door. She couldn’t afford tears, Cook would have her guts for garters if she went back to the scullery with a tear-streaked face. She took a deep breath, held her head high and walked away from the whimpers and her own memories of horrors that went on in that room.
Across fields and lanes, the moon shone its eerie light to show trees and buildings in almost complete silhouette. Three boys on their bicycles rode fast along an overgrown country lane, dodging ruts and puddles. Hearts pounding from self-induced terror as much as the exertion from pumping the pedals, lights fixed to the handlebars pitching and jiggling across the terrain, two boys followed the leader to Mockton Hall.
At the end of the lane, the shadows of trees behind them, moonlight flooding across an open driveway to a derelict and enticing adventure, three boys stood and caught their breath.
“Why couldn’t we come here in the daylight? That lane was spooky, I almost shit myself when that owl flew out of the big tree,” the smallest one said in a hoarse, breathless voice.
The other two looked at him. “That’s the point. It’s not much of a dare if it’s bright sunshine,” the other follower said. “Robbie told us it was going to be scary. He told us not to come if we were going to be scared or whine about it.”
“Shut up, Lee, I’m not whining,” the first boy said. “But if we’re going inside the house, I’m coming back in the daytime.”
“Chicken,” Lee said. The tallest of the three, he leaned over to Robbie and whispered in the leader’s ear. Robbie nodded and Lee laughed. “I told you he’d chicken out.”
“I’m not chickening out, but that house has been abandoned for years. I don’t want to break my leg and rely on you two to get me back home.”
“That’s your problem, Neil, there’s always a ‘but’ somewhere. My dad says you can ignore everything someone said before ‘but’,” Lee said.
“What does that mean?” Neil said, his voice cracking to make it sound like he really was whining.
“It means you’re lying when you said you’re not chickening out!” Lee said and hopped on his bike to pedal like mad down to the big house.
Robbie followed, leaving Neil to decide whether he was going to go on or go back. Neil turned to look down the dark lane and decided he didn’t like the idea of going back alone. He pedalled down the lane to catch up with his friends. “I’ve kept up with you two this far, I’m not going back before we see what Robbie found!”
Neil dropped his bike on the ground next to the other two and ran to catch up with the boys. They had disappeared around the side of the building. When Neil caught sight of them, he realised Robbie and Lee held the bike lights they’d taken off their bikes. Neil hadn’t thought about bringing a torch with him. “Oh, I don’t have my light, wait up,” he said and turned to fetch his bike light, but Lee called to him.
“Don’t worry about your light, we’ve both got one. Stick with us and you’ll be OK.”
“Well don’t run off and leave me in the dark,” Neil said.
“Chicken,” Lee said.
Neil picked his way across the courtyard, careful not to trip on rubble and junk. He looked up at the old, boarded-up house and wondered how long it had been since anyone lived there. He caught up with his friends just before the end of the building. “Wouldn’t it have been quicker to come around the other side? Surely that was the shortest route?”
Lee turned to look at Neil. “This is Robbie’s dare, we do it his way. When it’s your turn, you’d better come up with something better than this if you’re going to complain about it,” Lee said.
Robbie bent down to the ground. He placed his light on the ground as he cleared debris and rubble from an area close to the wall. Neil picked up the light.
“It’s not even switched on,” he said. He turned on the light and looked around. The old house loomed above them, doors and windows boarded up, impenetrable. Another building across the cobbled courtyard had no such protection. The main entrance, a large double door had a gaping hole across the bottom by which any small and agile boy could easily access the structure. “That looks interesting, we should come back tomorrow and explore that building if we can’t get into this one.”
Robbie stood back, pulling on a doorway flush to the ground.
“What have you found?” Lee said. He went forward, after Robbie.
Robbie stepped into the hole, down a couple of steps and into a cellar.
“Don’t you need your light?” Lee asked as he followed Robbie down.
“Don’t leave me out here on my own,” Neil squawked when he realised that was exactly what they were doing.